By the way, it’s not a carbon fiber hood, but an important safety feature coming to every BMW in one country!
There is no price to safety, as they often say. Especially in the field of racing cars, a lot is done to ensure safety. Accidents happen at higher speeds than in traffic and a little bit of racing car can ensure that the driver comes out of seriously hard crashes without serious injury.
Aftercare
And if it does go wrong, aftercare is often important. Although that also applies to street cars. Sometimes a serious fire can occur in a car and being able to extinguish it would be a nice bonus. There are enough cars delivered with fire extinguishers, although that often goes hand in hand with serious track cars because you are not allowed to participate on some track days without a fire extinguisher. Plus, that extra safety is always nice. Right?
Mandatory fire extinguisher
Now it is not an umbrella track day organizer that says you must have a fire extinguisher, but an entire country. South Korea. Perhaps somewhat upset by the recent incident where an EV fire caused considerable chaos, all kinds of extra safety measures are being introduced for cars. Including that every car sold from December 1, 2024, with five seats or more, must have a fire extinguisher on board. BMW immediately puts words into action and is the first to present the fire extinguisher that will be present in the cars.
BMW has a field day, because the majority of their range is a five-seater. The same goes for MINI of course. Both brands get a case that the extinguisher fits in and the extinguisher itself has the BMW or MINI logo printed on it. Furthermore, BMW claims that this fire extinguisher is better than your average red unit on the wall of your office building and 30 percent more effective at extinguishing a fire. Go ahead.
As said, there is no price tag on safety, so that Korea is thinking along with that idea is nice in itself. Cars are not getting cheaper this way, so if more countries come on board, it could become an expensive joke. For now, BMW is only giving away the extinguisher with cars that are sold in Korea, at least. Including a suitcase that apparently takes up a lot of luggage space. And would it really be handy that in the event of a serious fire you still have to unzip a suitcase and loosen the straps?
This article BMW now brings race car feature to every road car first appeared on Autoblog.nl.
